Free Museums in Berlin

Berlin is a city full of history, art and music. There are over 170 museums of all kind that wait for you to explore them. But as most of you guys travel on a budget and don’t really want to spend like 10€ on a museum visit, we will show you some nice museums that are free of charge.

One of them would be the “Topographie des Terrors” Museum. The site known since 1987 as the “Topography of Terror” was the central location from which the Nazis palnned and managed most of their crimes. Here, between 1933 and 1945, the most important institutions of the Nazi terror apparatus of the SS and police operated from the Secret State Police Office, the Reich SS Leadership, and the Reich Security Main Office. Partially destroyed during the war, rendered unrecognizable after the war by demolition and conversion, and eventually forgotten, this historic site was rediscovered in the early 1980s and gradually reestablished in the historical memory of Berlin and the Federal Republic of Germany.

There you will find three permanent exhibitions. All three are presented bilingually in German and English.

Topography of Terror. Gestapo, SS, and Reich Security Main Office on Wilhelm- and Prinz-Albrecht-Straße

The focus of the exhibition is the central institutions of the SS and police in the “Third Reich” as well as the crimes they perpetrated throughout Europe.

Berlin 1933–1945. Between Propaganda and Terror

A permanent exhibition about the capital Berlin during the “Third Reich” will be on display in the exhibition trench alongside the excavated segments of cellar wall on Niederkirchnerstraße (formerly Prinz-Albrecht-Straße). It will address National Socialist policy in Berlin and its consequences for the city and its population.

Topography of Terror Site Tour. The History of the Site

The site tour, which mainly follows the exposed building remnants, encompasses 15 stations. Informational ­signs provide an overview of the historic location and the site’s use during the Nazi period and the postwar era. The tour also integrates remains of the Berlin Wall, which have been designated a historic monument.

You will find the “Topographie of Terror” Museum close to Potsdamer Platz U-Bahn station. (U2)

Another free Museum would be the “Tränenpalast” (tear Palace). At the historic site of the tear Palace (everyday border experiences. Division of Germany) the permanent exhibition shows life in the face of division and border. The Palace of Tears at Berlin’s Friedrichstraße station is one of the places where people from East and West, were felt most directly the Cold War and the German division. The building was constructed in 1962 as the terminal building for departure from East Germany to West Berlin, but in fact was the place until 1989 more than just a place administration according to border controls. Because families were torn apart here painful, and only the longing remained, one day again.

If you would like to know more about “the Berlin Wall”, we would recommend you to visit the Wall Documentation Center at Bernauer Straße. The Documentation Center is part of the Berlin Wall Memorial ensemble. It offers detailed historical and background information on the history and politics behind the building of the Berlin Wall. It has a permanent exhibition in German and English, an observation tower overlooking a section of the original border, a digital archive with original documents, audio stations with historical radio broadcasts from East and West, and regular events.

The next one is less like a museum, well… its not a museum but a memorial. J The Soviet War Memorial is a vast war memorial and military cemetery in Berlin’s Treptower Park. It was built to the design of the Soviet architect Yakov Belopolsky to commemorate 5,000 of the 80,000 Soviet soldiers who fell in the Battle of Berlin in April–May 1945. It opened four years after World War II on May 8, 1949. The Memorial served as the central war memorial of East Germany. The monument is one of three Soviet memorials built in Berlin after the end of the war. The other two memorials are the Tiergarten memorial, built in 1945 in the Tiergarten district of what later became West Berlin, and the Soviet War Memorial Schönholzer Heide in Berlin’s Pankow district.